‘He is always enthusiastic, almost invariably cheerful, and amiable, and quite correct. One can well imagine how a sunny-tempered man of elegant tastes and universal humanity must have won easily the regard of a great number of friends’; so E. T. Merrill wrote of Pliny over a century ago. Such sentiments on the ebullient style and sunny personality of Pliny have perdured for decades, even up to the present. And why not? A reputation for optimism and even naiveté should not be so easily overcome for one who admits to a weakness for praising his friends too excessively (Ep. 7.28) and writes an entire letter for the sole purpose of demonstrating his unwillingness to say anything negative about someone (8.22.4). The Panegyricus, with its periods of fulsome praise and hopefulness, presents no reason to alter Pliny's image as a cheerful optimist.

Dio Chrysostom's First Tarsian Oration (Or. 33) is arguably one of his most entertaining works; it is certainly one of the most peculiar. The speech, which some scholars date to the reign of Vespasian (69–79 ce) and others to that of Trajan (98–112 ce), is addressed to the citizens of Tarsus, a prosperous city in the province of Cilicia in south-eastern Asia Minor. In terms of content and structure, the First Tarsian bears less resemblance to the more ‘political’ Second Tarsian (Or. 34) than to two of Dio's better-known speeches, the Rhodian (Or. 31) and the Alexandrian (Or. 32). In these, as in the First Tarsian, Dio severely criticizes his putative addressees – the given city's inhabitants – for practising an activity that he finds reprehensible and symptomatic of deeper moral failings. For the Alexandrians it is their uncontrolled and wanton behaviour at public performances; for the Rhodians their economically profitable but ethically suspect habit of re-dedicating statues by changing their labels. The First Tarsian's similarities with the Alexandrian are particularly striking: both feature a long exordium in which Dio explains why he has decided to blame and chastise, rather than praise, his listeners, followed by a sustained attack on the vice in question that employs a battery of remarkably parallel mythological allusions, rhetorical analogies, and anecdotes.

Scholars have always tried to find plausible explanations why certain sorts of error have occurred in manuscripts, and much progress has recently been made in trying to analyse such sources of corruption. However, it is not always remembered that scribes were usually monks and that their minds may often have been on higher things than copying Livy's history for the umpteenth time. Over the last few years I have been collating the primary manuscripts of the first five books of Livy and so large a number of revealing corruptions came to light that it seemed valuable to collect them together as evidence of subconscious or unconscious preoccupations of scribes. The result is important, because it means that editors must not be over-mechanical in their approach to the transmission of texts.

Until the end of the twentieth century, the study of Hellenistic Babylonia appealed mostly to researchers trained in Classics. When J. G. Droysen published Geschichte des Hellenismus between 1836 and 1843, Akkadian had in fact not yet been deciphered. Classical texts therefore provided the only way in which scholars could understand Babylonia. When Assyriology developed as a field on its own, researchers focused on Sumero-Akkadian culture; they considered the Hellenistic period to be a decadent time in which Greek culture had infiltrated the native one, to its detriment. With these two perspectives combined, the Hellenocentric understanding of Hellenistic Babylonia was strengthened. In the early 1990s, however, Susan Sherwin-White and Amelie Kuhrt vigorously upended this view. They focused on non-classical texts and documents and thereby stressed the vitality of Near Eastern cultural traditions. Their challenging work paved the way for intercultural reflection on Hellenistic Babylonia. In effect, the interactions between Babylon and Greece could therefore be developed, by a new generation of researchers, as cross-cultural, meaning that it is likely that mutual impact was felt in both cultures. Among them, Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper offers, in the field of archaeology, a useful interpretative model which analyses cultural interactions in their diachronic and multi-directional dimensions. She assumes the existence of cultural mediators who stimulate interactions between people of two cultural backgrounds sharing a common space. Over time, the facilitation of exchange may affect the nature of social relationships, so much so that they no longer develop in accordance with cultural factors but rather with social class, age, gender, or profession. This implies numerous combinations which vary depending on the sociocultural background of each participant in a given social interaction.

There are a number of instances in Tacitus' treatment of Tiberius which concern the emperor's behaviour when some mention of his predecessor was made. Critics of Tacitus have apparently overlooked Tiberius' extreme sensitivity on this subject, with the result that interpretations have been offered which tend to obscure what Tacitus is trying to say about Tiberius. It is the intention of this note to examine such passages, in an attempt to clarify Tiberius' attitude and Tacitus' presentation of it.

καὶ μισθοὺς αἰτεῖτε, διδάσκαλοι. ‘You schoolmasters actually expect a salary as well! What an ungrateful lot you are!’ Well, I must allow there is something in Strato's jibe. It is a pleasant life, and after thirty years spent in teaching boys and undergraduates from thirteen to about twenty-two, I can say I have enjoyed it all; and certainly, like Solon, I continually learn new lessons as I grow older. I wish I could justify my reading this paper by claiming that I had something to offer that would fulfil that one of the objects of our Association that is described as ‘to improve the practice of classical teaching’. But I fear no such illumination is likely to reward my audience. Still, another of our Association's objects is ‘to create opportunities for intercourse among lovers of classical learning’, and that your kind invitation to me has provided.

Suppose a class set to put into Latin ‘I think I have said enough to show why this war is necessary’. How many teachers would accept esset in the subordinate clause? Not, I venture to affirm, one in a hundred. Yet that is what was written by Cicero, who had of course the advantage of not knowing the above ‘rule’, in the De Imperio Cn. Pompei, 10. 27: ‘satis mihi multa verba fecisse videor, quare esset hoc bellum … necessarium; … restat ut de imperatore … dicendum esse videatur.’ He uses the same construction later in the speech (19.57): ‘quo mihi etiam indignius videtur obtrectatum esse adhuc, Gabinio dicam anne Pompeio an utrique, id quod est verius, ne legaretur A. Gabinius Cn. Pompeio expetenti ac postulanti’ And a fairly careful reading of the speeches against Catiline gives eleven examples of historic sequence after a pure perfect against six of primary. I quote some of them: ii. 4. 6, ‘quod exspectavi, iam sum adsecutus, ut vos omnes factam esse aperte coniurationem contra rem publicam esse videretis’; 12. 26, ‘vos … vestra tecta … defendite; mihi ut urbi … satis esset praesidii consultum atque provisum est’; iii. 12. 27, ‘mentes hominum audacissimorum sceleratae … ne vobis nocere possent ego providi; ne mihi noceant vestrum est providere’; iv. 1. 1, ‘mihi si haec condicio consulatus data est ut omnes acerbitates … perferrem, feram non solum fortiter verum etiam lubenter’; 2, ‘si hunc exitum consulatus mei di immortales esse voluerunt ut vos … ex caede … eriperem, quaecunque mihi uni proponetur fortuna, subeatur’; 5. 9, ‘habemus a Caesare … sententiam.… intellectum est quid interesset inter levitatem contionatorum et animum vere popularem’; 7. 14, ‘causa est … haec inventa sola in qua omnes sentirent unum atque idem’; 9. 19, ‘atque haec non ut vos … excitarem locutus sum’.

The Porticus Octaviae was built in the Campus Martius sometime between 33 and 23 BC (Figure 1). There is controversy as to whether it was built by Augustus and dedicated to his sister, or commissioned by Octavia herself. The complex, however, which included a library and senate house was closely associated with Octavia and her son. The Porticus Octaviae fell victim to the fire of ad 80 and was probably restored by Domitian. An inscription on the propylon of the complex records its restoration, also after a fire, by Septimius Severus and Caracalla in AD 203. Little consideration, however, has been given to the importance of the Severan restoration in the context of this emperor's building programme. This article will examine the messages conveyed by the restoration of the Porticus Octaviae in terms of Severus' imperial policy, and in particular his desire to connect himself to the legacy of Augustus.

Since Herodotus, historians have found anecdotes indispensable and notoriously unreliable. Although the historicity of an anecdote may be elusive, its use by posterity can be illuminating. Whether or not Canute commanded the incoming tide to halt cannot be proven, because the episode was not reported until a century later by a moralistic chronicler, Henry of Huntingdoa According to Henry, the king staged the scene to demonstrate to sycophantic courtiers his impotence before the forces of nature and their creator. However, later generations forgot his pious motive, and Canute survives in the popular imagination as an examplar of executive folly, like Xerxes who had the Hellspont scourged. Whatever the facts, posterity has its own uses for anecdotes.

quotiens magni alicuius <viri> mors ab historicis narrata est, totiens fere consummatio totius vitae et quasi funebris laudatio redditur. hoc, semel aut iterum a Thucydide factum, item in paucissimis personis usurpatum a Sallustio, T. Livius benignus omnibus magnis viris praestitit; sequentes historici multo id effusius fecerunt.

Horace's Soracte Ode is a difficult poem. It begins in winter, apparently in the countryside, and concludes with the sketch of an urban incident in summer (or spring). This seeming inconsistency has provoked widely divergent critical comment. E. Fraenkel sums up one approach:

We like the Ode because it contains several passages of great beauty, among them some happy adaptations of Alcaean motifs. But we have to admit that as a whole the poem falls short of the perfection reached by Horace in many of his odes. Its heterogeneous elements have not merged into a harmonious unit. Line 18, nunc et campus et areae and what follows suggest a season wholly different from the severe winter at the beginning. This incongruity cannot be removed by any device of apologetic interpretation.

One of the more interesting features of Terence's dramatic work is the evidence in it of frequent conflict between the dramatist and the dramatic conventions of his day. To some instances of this conflict, represented by criticisms, explicit or implicit, of convention, attention has been drawn by Sir Gilbert Norwood in his book on The Art of Terence. But even he has perhaps not followed up the fuller implications of Terence's critical attitude in determining the nature of his drama. My purpose in this article is to show that there was one convention against which, above all others, Terence consistently rebelled, namely, the convention of the slave who manages the action; and I would even go so far as to suggest that his success as a dramatic artist is, to a large extent, dependent upon the way in which he solved the problem of the slave.

Just as(pace Blaydes and Dawe) ὒβριζ φυτει τ⋯ραννον, Sophokles' Oidipous continues to beget misunderstanding. One can guarantee that any conversation about the play will soon produce any one of at least four large-scale misconceptions regarding it. One of these is discussed here, not so much for the purpose of dispelling it, as in the hope that such discussion will lead to some general conclusions about the dramatic technique of the Greek tragedians.

The historical evidence yielded by the coins of Greece and Rome is abundant, concise, essentially practical, and easily assimilated. Comparison of this evidence with what is provided by other branches of historical research is out of place, and seldom profitable: it is enough to point out the fundamental difference between coin-evidence and that which is furnished, for example, by works of art or inscriptions. A people's artistic or literary achievement is mainly a free expression of individual tendencies: though Phrynichus offended an influential section of public opinion with his play on the Sack of Miletus, and though Pericles was able to yoke Pheidias to his imperialist policy, it is true to say that such achievement was generally the result of free minds working their will. Artistic evidence for history is therefore ‘unofficial’, or informal. It is, of course, all the better for that; yet it must lack the precision which we look for in inscriptions—let us say, in an Athenian list of tribute-payments, or in a municipal charter under the Roman Empire. Inscriptions, indeed, are very often the product of private enterprise—the wish to record family honours, to mourn the dead parent, wife, or child, or to bless the emperor of the day; but they include a large class in which the information given is official in its purpose, and therefore full and accurate.

As a contribution to the study of ‘Latin in use’, we focus in this article on the ways a writer indicates what s/he wants to emphasize within the sentence; the specific linguistic signs s/he uses to that end; and the range of effects that these may have for an alert reader. We have used, on the one hand, recent developments in the study of narrative, discourse and general linguistics and, on the other, the work of earlier pioneers in the field of word order in Latin.